


arctic knights

by Poose



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Boot Worship, Daydreaming, Exhaustion, Internal Monologue, M/M, POV Alternating, Service, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24048685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poose/pseuds/Poose
Summary: Two men, left to their own devices, and how they occupy their thoughts.
Relationships: Thomas Jopson/Lt Edward Little
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39





	arctic knights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vigilantejam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vigilantejam/gifts).



> A little blood and bruising, all imagined.

He has grown increasingly weary of making the trudge between the ships. His usual solace in solitude was displaced by the nature of the task. Only — _him!_ — an errand boy! Oh, discretion might provide cover for his actions, and if he was already to _go_ to Erebus then it was but small potatoes to bring along a chit, have a reconnoiter down the stores. Surely, he, Edward, could see the sense in that. But he might send Jopson to fetch his poison instead. Certainly he’d rush at the chance. At least delegate the task to a Lieutenant lesser than a first — that would be a kindness. 

Good Christ, what did it matter _what_ he drank? It seemed to Edward to be a matter of sheer quantity above all else. A measure mattered for the men but amongst themselves. Well. A drink was a drink, when you got down to it. Edward rather hoped that once the whisky ran dry — yes, damn it, _all_ the whisky in _every officer’s_ stores, he’d smash the cursed bottles himself if he must, pour their contents out over onto the ice, as if they were afloat on open water and none would be the wiser as to where the stuff inside had got to — 

He prays that day will rise to meet them soon enough, when — under circumstances which, yes, Edward grants, are unlikely to occur — the Captain will see the tedium of his gluttonous melancholy, and under his own steam swear to see himself rid it. If not in that precise set of circumstances, though, might not he slow his momentum were he able? Lessen his enjoyment enough to captain again, and to command the whole expedition. Then, bless his woolen socks, Edward might sink into that role which he knows best, and enjoy the library, his ale and books, and issue only orders on someone else's behalf. A mercy, that would be. 

The black humour, though. That — that _thing_.

It lingers.

Out here one can look and look and see nothing. The open sea is a kind of nothing, and what keeps them corked up is merely sea; immobile, frozen, but a nothing he knows well enough by now. It has been his life if not quite his calling. 

What perturbs his mind is the way sound carries in this vast, flat quiet. As he makes the journey he can hear patrol steps pacing measured on the wood, each whip of canvas against board and beam. His plodding footsteps, loud as bugles across an open field. 

He walks in, receives a message, asks Collins for a tally. The men, thick underfoot as hounds and braying in the chaos, crack jokes that neither of them register. 

His thoughts on the return are uncharitable. Edward regrets only that they are ridiculous flights of fancy, for he dares against reason to hope that the storm will weather, and soon. The Captain's mood encircles them all, and with each new dawn he does his utmost to imagine a day in which Terror, along with her men, will not be Edward’s cross to bear. Would that he could thwart such an inevitability through hope rather than rumination.

Back on board Jopson edges Edward into the seat closest the stove, takes his frozen boots from him, and says _He'll be with you by the by._ He hands him a cup: his own Fortnum & Mason cocoa fortified with spiced rum, which he is sure he hadn't asked for but finds welcome all the same, and thus calmed, stretches his stiff legs out to their fullest. 

*~*~*~*~*

Jopson takes the boots into his cabin. Strictly speaking, it is Gibson's duty, but he often makes the overture, and Lieutenant Little often accepts. The other officers, too, he does this for on occasion, and there is a warm satisfaction round the back of his neck when they offer him thanks. 

He finds it pleasurable to have these quiet moments to himself in which to wipe dry the meltwater, brush the grit away, warm the frozen leather between his hands, near the low lamp until it can take a grease, and then, if he fancies it, a polish.

Crouched in his cabin, near the floor but a shade away from kneeling, Jopson lets his thoughts drift where they may. Directionless, without rudder. 

A house in the country. By the sea. Alone save for the girl who comes in to do for them once a week. He can cook, run the place. The laundry he will wash in the little stream that runs alongside the back garden. A small corner, a plot of earth; easy. Quiet. 

_Edward_ would find him in the bedroom which was theirs, in that instance. He would have been at some task with the horses, maybe, and have the sun on his back and the smell of hay in his hair, grown long but kept neat. 

That selfsame house, then, fallen into ruin. A widower dwelt there and had been without companion these many long, lonely years. _Mr. Little_ , then, if he was a gentleman, and, oh, being a gentleman, he would ask permission first — save if he had been wounded by some wild thing — and at this Jopson's mouth twitches, because it is a silly flight of fancy, too ridiculous to put into words — but if it causes no harm to anyone and his hands are occupied he will consider himself free enough to ruminate on the scenario. 

A grand estate, then, on the moor, left empty as he traveled east for reasons technically unsound but enthralling all the same, and who returned from his journey _transformed_. 

His anguish would be audible all the way down the village when he cried out in the night. But Jopson? Jopson was faithful. Jopson would go to him. Why, he might well have to be restrained, to protect him from his worser self. 

Why not a castle in an unknown land? Delicious smells wafting in through the narrow window, the city scrabbling below him. Strange sounds resonant across the harbour. A battle, a siege by water and by land. Infantry and cavalry swarming right up to the ramparts. 

Edward — or, if he would permit himself, have him be _Sir_ Edward — sat astride a great horse, come to liberate — the citadel, this prisoner, the keep — and Jopson held captive in his splendid room — the knight's dark hair matted with sweat, round indentations from where the metal had pressed against his cheeks, hollow from hunger and exhaustion. His face pink rather than red; hot rather than kissed by otherworldly cold. 

Might he have sustained an injury? Yes, if he must, but make it a minor one. A flesh wound. Better yet a glance to the shoulder causing the plate to dent. It would have to be taken off to make certain. Underneath a bruise, a massive one. Purple in the middle already turning to vile yellow round the edges, bloody scrapes upon the skin. Jopson would clean it, tend it, and while they would hasten the matter in order to make themselves free, some things were better when not rushed. 

He removes his gloves and touches the leather with a bare finger. It nearly causes a jolt in his heart. His face grows hot. A cottage, again, whirls its way into his thoughts. A situation where rain falls soft rather than throwing ice-ridden daggers in your eyes. A place where Jopson might dare to do as he is thus, knelt down before a fireplace, their fireplace, and to take as long with them as he wishes until the job is done to his satisfaction. Somehow this is the most intimate imagining of them all. How he longs for it, itches to take the boots back into the cabin, the better to warm his feet between his hands, to help him back into them. To have him stamp the soles against the ground firmly enough that Jopson will feel the reverberations in his knees. But the Captain will wake soon, and when that happens he must quell these wicked, wicked thoughts.

Sure enough, the call comes. You can hear everything, on a ship. 

*~*~*~*~*

His stocking feet slide across the bare wood as he reaches forward to deposit his now-empty teacup on the table, certain to mind the maps and charts covering its surface. They will need them, come spring. From the Captain's berth, a rumble. Jopson's name like a moan, then a noise like a retch. Edward pretends he cannot hear these sounds, unfailingly polite though no one else is in the room to witness him. 

_Here you are, Lieutenant._ The steward interrupts Edward’s private solitude to return to him his boots. And in fine nick, too. Dry now, and cleaned to a spit-polish. He nods in appreciation and feels a stab of shame that somehow this is all the thanks he can muster. A man can bear the cold. Brutal, yes, unrelenting without contest. You feel the the sting of it in your elbows, your eardrums. But how tired it made a person? Edward had not anticipated that. Walking across the quarterdeck might as well be slogging through ankle-deep mud and maybe that would be a sight easier. 

He sits back up in the seat and passes a hand over his hair, its carapace of ice now mostly thawed. The words are slow to come to his lips. 

_Ah, Edward_ says the Captain, wincing his way into the room with a plastered-upon smile. His stomach lurches to see it. Another morning in which he will give over to fragile hope merely to have that hope dashed by the luncheon hour. The first drink, the shifting mood. The desire that today will not be the same as yesterday. Only it will be. One infernal day that they repeat over and over like Edward's own private purgatory. And sure enough, here he is. Rummaging in the cabinet before he's even donned his jacket. What weakness; what endless, unyielding folly!

The Captain dispatches Jopson to fetch his morning tea and turns to Edward with all false cheer. _What report from Erebus?_

**Author's Note:**

> Back on my bullshit, apparently. On Tumblr [@pitcherplant](https://pitcherplant.tumblr.com/)


End file.
